Develop A Research Strategy

These questions can help you frame your topic and identify search tools: 1. What do you want to write about? 2. What types of information would you like to find (or are you required to use for your assignment?) 3. What has been published about your topic?

Encyclopedias can be very useful tools for getting started on your topic.

These guides include Choose a Research Topic, 5 Steps to Better Library Research, Find a Book, and more.

Evaluate Your Sources

Accuracy

Does the author cite references to support her/his thesis? Are the references also from credible sources?

Author

Who produced the information? What can you find about the author's credentials?

Objectivity

Is the content presented as fact or speculation? What is the source's purpose?

Timeframe

When was the source written/created? Is the information still relevant?

Definitions

Abstract

A brief summary of the main points in a book, article or other work.

Bibliography

A list of works cited at the end of an article, book or other information source.

Catalog

A list of records that represent the holdings of a library.

Database

An organized, searchable collection of information, often related to a specific subject area. One of the primary tools for locating articles by topic. Most databases available through the library are licensed resources with access restrictions.

Peer Review

A process through which manuscripts submitted to a journal are evaluated for quality by one or more subject experts in addition to the editor before being accepted for publication.

Scholarly Journal

A publication containing articles that have undergone peer review, a process through which manuscripts submitted to a journal are evaluated for quality by one or more subject experts in addition to the editor before being accepted for publication.

Search For Books

Harvest is the UCD library online catalog of the collections of all five UC Davis General Libraries. It does not include the holdings of the Law Library. If you log in (My Account) using your library card number and PIN, you can renew books online, and request items that have been checked out to another borrower, or are in storage.

Library of Congress Classification is used for all of the UCD libraries except the health sciences libraries (which use NLM -- National Library of Medicine -- classification). Learn about how books are arranged in the UCD libraries with the following guide.

UC-eLinks

Brought to you by UC libraries! UC-eLinks helps to link to *choices* to find the item(s) you are interested in. UC-eLinks appears in most library literature or subject databases and provides a consistent way of getting to online articles (if licensed) or to information about which print issues of a journal we own. If we do not own a journal or book, you can use the UC-eLinks service to REQUEST that the item be sent to you for free from another UC library -- often using Web delivery if the item is an article or book chapter.

Search For Articles

These subject databases and full-text collections may be demonstrated or discussed at the library session.

Academic Search Complete (ASC) provides coverage of multidisciplinary, full-text academic journals to support scholarly research in all areas of the arts, humanities and the social, life and physical sciences. The database includes the full-text articles from 9,100 journals, with an additional 13,690 journals indexed and abstracted. Searches can be restricted to peer-reviewed articles.

"Indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition to the searchable cited references provided for more than 1,200 journals, Business Source Complete contains detailed author profiles for the 25,000 most-cited authors in the database." Business Source Complete is an upgrade from Business Source Premier

Coverage: coverage varies by title with some going as far back as 1886.

NOTE: default UCD Search Type set to Advanced Ovid Search. Citations and abstracts to the international agricultural literature, including veterinary medicine, human and animal nutrition, forestry, rural development, as well as other related topics such as tourism and human ecology. Covers over 11,000 journals & conference proceedings and selected books in agriculture. Produced by CAB (Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux) International (CABI) with more than 9.0 million records as of 10/27/10.

HISTORICAL SCOPE: Archive abstracts added in August 2005 go back to 1910 with 1,860,000 additional records.

CAB DATABASE PDFs: As of January 2009, hard-to-find literature may be available as CAB Database PDFs (so noted *below* the UC-eLinks button). Currently, ONLY Internet Explorer (PC platform) or Safari/Google Chrome (Mac platform) loads these PDFs. These CABI Full Text items give users automatic access to over 187,000 (as of March 2013) journal articles, conference papers and reports - 80% of which are not available electronically anywhere else.

A comprehensive, indexed bibliography with selected abstracts of the world's economic literature compiled from the American Economic Association's Journal of economic literature and the Index of economic articles in journals and collective volumes. Topics include economic theory and history, monetary theory and financial institutions; labor economics; international, regional, urban economics; and other related subjects.

Register for a Library class! (http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/dept/instruc/classes/descriptions.php#class69)As of Spring 2009, OvidSP is the only interface for FSTA! Register for a library class on the new OvidSP interface.

PsycINFO is a department of the American Psychological Association (APA). It provides citations to articles in professional journals, conference proceedings, books, reports, dissertations and even important internet sites in psychology and related disciplines, most with abstracts and some citations. (Psychinfo is the incorrect spelling.)

More than 23 million citations and abstracts for articles published in approximately 8,400 journals in medicine, life sciences, health administration, veterinary medicine, nursing, molecular biology and genetics. PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine on the NCBI platform.

SciFinder is the most comprehensive bibliographic database for scholarly research in the field of chemistry. It contains over 29 million citations and indexes over 10,000 journals, covering all aspects of chemistry, including chemical aspects of: biology and life sciences, engineering and materials science, food science, geology, medicine, physics, and polymer science. SciFinder also allows searching of chemical substances, chemical reactions, and includes some property data and spectra. It is the online version of Chemical Abstracts. Includes Cited Reference Searching: 1996 - present.

Coverage: 1907-present (with selected pre-1907 material)

Location: SciFinder Scholar can only be used by UC students, faculty and staff. Registration is required (see below)

Download Java Runtime (http://www.cas.org/misc/downloads/jreplugin.html)Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Version 6.2 or higher is required to use the structure drawing editor. Get both the Windows and Mac versions at the URL above.

Sociological Abstracts Database is a primary resource for accessing the latest research sponsored in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database draws information from an international selection of over 2,600 journals and other serials publications, plus conference papers, books, and dissertations. Records added after 1974 contain in-depth and nonevaluative abstracts of journal articles.

Journal Ranking

Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports is a comprehensive tool for assessing the importance of research journals in disciplines and subdisciplines including medical specialties. NOTE that review journals tend to be listed as top ranked titles, taking space away from original research titles, so use with caution.

Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by Thomson Reuters with each yearly data analysis being completed in the following year. The most recent edition is always published in the summer following the year analyzed.

Journal Citation Reports indicates the most frequently cited journals in a field, the highest impact journals in a field, and the largest journals in a field. JCR Science Edition contains data from over 7,300 journals in science and technology. JCR Social Sciences Edition contains data from over 2,200 journals in the social sciences. NOTE: For disciplines that have longer timespans for citation, consider sorting for ranking by using the 5-year Impact Factor sort.

Impact Factors in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor)Definition of terms, details on how the metrics are calculated, and information on the validity, manipulation, and misuse of Impact Factors

1) What Is EndNote?

EndNote, licensed for all UCD full-time students, faculty, researchers and staff, is a bibliographic reference manager which enables citations to be stored, searched, and quickly inserted into research papers in the format of many scholarly journals.

3) Adding References To Your EndNote Library (Quick & Easy)

Step-by-step instructions for UCD Library licensed subject databases and using direct export and filters are provided for PC and Mac users from the UCD EndNote webpage (see Section 1 above) from the Filters section on the left column.

Quick & Easy: Direct Export [EndNote] Some UCD licensed subject databases enable one to *directly* export source bibliographic information from the database into your EndNote Library. This is the most efficient method for building an EndNote library very quickly.

In addition, the Harvest UCD libraries online catalog and the Worldcat (OCLC Firstsearch) catalogs work with Direct Export.

CLASS EXERCISE: Add five references from any two databases listed above into an EndNote Library

CAUTION for Mac Users: Safari does not work with Direct Export -- you must use FireFox.

4) EndNote Cite While You Write (CWYW)

EndNote’s Cite While You Write (CWYW) feature inserts EndNote commands into Word’s Tools menu (or on an EndNote tab in Word 2007 and 2010 for Windows). This provides you with direct access to your EndNote references while writing in Microsoft Word. CWYW commands enable EndNote to implement bibliographic formatting to the document that is currently open in Word.

CLASS EXERCISE: Keep the EndNote Library open and open MS Word. Paste a paragraph of any text (an abstract from a citation in your library works well) into MS Word and change style from default to the required MLA style.